Sabore’s Well is pleased to announce the return of Sabore Oyie to the US from November 16th, 2016 to January 11th, 2017.

Sabore has the following events scheduled and still has time slots available to come visit you, your business, friends or your school:

2016

November 18th – La Entrada Middle School, Menlo Park

November 7th – St. Francis Center Auxiliary Dinner

December 8th – Mission Dolores Academy, San Francisco

December 12th – Harlan Kelly, GM San Francisco PUC

December 15th – PA Walsh School, Morgan Hill

December 17th – Martine Bolsens Open House – please contact us for more info and opportunities to purchase beautiful Maasai jewelry and goods

2017

January 5th – Union Middle School

January 5th – Dartmouth Middle School

January 5th – Dinner, hosted by Monica Silva

January 8th – Susan Negrin, Open to the Public @ Hayward Historical Society (come meet a real life Maasai Warrior and hear about what life is like growing up amongst the wild animals in Kenya. Also have a chance to support this organization and purchase beautiful handmade Maasai jewelry and goods)

To participate in any of the events listed above or to find out how Sabore can come visit you, please email us at saboreswell@gmail.com

Sabore’s Well is now working on the next phase of it’s mission which is to build preschools on the existing well sites. Sabore’s Well was very fortunate to be introduced to an extremely talented young woman, Vanille Fricker, who is perusing a degree in Architecture. Vanille has generously volunteered her time to help design the Naretu Preschools. The 2016 summer vacation allowed her to intern at a local architecture company, which lucky for us, focused on building schools. Vanille took the skills she learned from her internship along with ideas she came up with after viewing photographs of various Maasai structures, to design a school that exceeded our expectations.

The original design idea for the Naretu Preschools was to incorporate the theme ” The Circle of Life”. The school will be constructed in a semi-circle shape which will keep the children always in plain view of the teachers. We will start off with 3 classrooms, a cafeteria and an office. Teachers housing will also be constructed behind the school. The buildings roof will be sloped for water catchment and to provide a resource for watering the vegetable garden which will be used to feed the students.

As you can see from the drawings Vanille has rendered, it is going to be a very functional and colorful school not to mention a much needed institution to allow the local children the opportunity to begin their learning journey at the proper age.

Sabore’s Well participated in it’s first grant writing proposal this summer. Blue Planet Network sent out a request for proposals for a Rural Water Supply System Rehabilitation and Expansion program. They were seeking applications from members to rehabilitate, expand or upgrade existing water supply systems. Using the evaluation criteria and the submission guidelines outlined in Blue Planet Network’s request, Sabore’s Well wrote a 10 page proposal pursuing funds to repair one of the boreholes.

Sabore’s Well #1 in the Supetai region was completed in May 2014 and was functioning at a maximum capacity of 30 CM per hour. It was serving the community for over a year when it experienced a malfunction with the motherboard on the control panel. This failure caused an issue with the solar pump and in an attempt to remove the device, it fell deep into the casings. Several attempts were made to extricate the pump but to no avail. The well at this point became non-producing and it was determined that the only solution was to drill a new borehole.

We are proud to announce that Sabore’s Well was selected as a grant recipient and received the full amount of grant dollars requested. We hired a very competent drilling company to drill the new well, install a solar pump and water meter, connect new pipes to the holding tank with a proper shut off valve and to revamp the solar structure previously installed. Once the funds were received by Blue Planet Network, drilling commenced immediately on October 17th. It took 3 days to complete the borehole and install new casings. The required 24 hour pump testing then followed and we are pleased to report as of October 29, 2016 the new well is functioning beautifully.

We are very thankful and grateful to Blue Planet Network for choosing Sabore’s Well as a grant recipient and the Maasai community, especially the women and girls, are overjoyed that a clean fresh water source near their homes is once again available.

Naretu Preschools – The first location of the Naretu Preschool has been identified. The preschool will be located on the property donated for the Supetai Well and was demarcated in January 2016. A surveyor came out to place the required posts on the four corners of the property. It is a perfect location to construct the school and all of the other required buildings to support this new campus.

We are working with an architect student who has come up with a brilliant design to keep the children safe and secure in their new learning environment. The current plan is to utilize the “Circle of Life” concept when constructing the school buildings. A sloped roof will allow for water catchment which will be used for the school garden. The school will have a small cafeteria and food program which will use the fruits and vegetables harvested from the garden to feed the students as well as teach them a useful skill..

Teachers housing, bathrooms, toilets and a play ground have also been added to the design. We are refining the set up and sizes of each structure and are hoping to display it soon on the website.

We are beginning to take donations to build the school and really appreciate the support to make this endeavor a reality.

Well update – Well #3 – We are in the process of finding another site for the third well and have been talking with the community to see where the best location is and who would benefit the most from this borehole. This also requires a landowner to donate 2 acres of land with good access. Several sites have been reviewed, but the next critical step is employing a hydrological surveyor to determine if there is a water source underground.

Oldonyo Orasha Well #2 – The Oldonyo Orasha well is functioning beautifully and has changed the lives of the community it serves. The villagers had built a temporary watering hole for the local livestock and now is proud to display it’s permanent structure made possible with the funds collected to support the well. The watering hole is approximately 20 feet long and not only provides water for the resident goats, sheep and cows but also to the local zebra, wildebeest, gazelles and warthogs.

Supetai Well #1 – the Supetai well was completed in May of 2014 and was functioning at maximum capacity. Through continual water testing samples, it was determined there was a high concentration of naturally occurring fluoride and nitrates in the water. Sabore’s Well was able to obtain a solar powered water purification systems that eliminated these contaminates and produce potable water.

It was then discovered the solar pump had malfunctioned and while trying to remove it from the well, it dropped into the casing. A truck with a grappling hook was dispatched to try and remove the pump, however rocks had entered the casing thus preventing the pump to be extricated. This has been a very unfortunate set-back and we are working on ways to alleviate the problem and will have a solution soon.

Sabore’s Well is pleased to announce that as of March 2016, it has obtained its own non-profit status as a 501(c)3 organization under the Internal Revenue Service code and can now collect donations directly from donors. These donations will be tax deductible under IRC Section 170.

We are very excited about the advantages having our own non-profit will bring and the additional services we will be able to provide to the Maasai communities. We will now be able to have both the drilling of wells and the construction of schools under one umbrella. This, we believe, will give us more clarity with our donors and the ability to apply for grants.